Death by... something new?

[V8mate]

I remember the utter delight I experienced the first time I sat in front of a computer and launched Harvard Graphics. 1991? A great way for the technological everyman to create modern presentations.

Fast forward a few years and PowerPoint became a key element of the Office 'suite', thereby catapulting it into prime position in businesses and homes. And there it has remained ever since.

A few 3rd party plug-ins have come and gone, but I feel that the product is well overdue a butt-kicking from an upstart competitor.

Why are presentations still stuck in the PowerPoint sheet format? Why can't I easily create business graphics to rival what has become common election night currency? Why can't I embed - live - the speaker into the graphics?

What I'm really hoping, is that the revolution in presentation media happened without me noticing and that the first reply here will point out that it's been available for not too many ££s for a while now.

But... if its not, why hasn't the revolution happened? Surely we're all bored to death by PP?

[jeremyc]

V8mate said:

What I'm really hoping, is that the revolution in presentation media happened without me noticing and that the first reply here will point out that it's been available for not too many ££s for a while now.

I think you're probably looking for www.prezi.com

Create funky presentations not constrained by the slide format, and overlay a video of the presenter.

[Magnum 475]

You could also look at Keynote. As long as you don't try to constrain it by using Powerpoint style graphics and formats (or maintaining powerpoint compatibility) it's way ahead of PPT.

[mmm-five]

Prezi, Canva, etc. are quite good too, but you'd need a corporate change for everyone to swap over...and a bit of a learning curve.

If you've got thousands (or hundreds of thousands of employees), then I can't imagine how many legacy PPT files you'd have, so you'd still need Powerpoint to access/repurpose these anyway...and if you have to have Powerpoint, then why swap it for something else.

Over the years I've used the following as DTP/presentation tools:

• Interleaf (it was something similar to this, but came as a hardware/software bundle as a workstation)
• Harvard Graphics
• Cricket
• Aldus Persuasion
• Aldus Freehand
• Aldus Pagemaker
• Lotus Freelance
• Microsoft Powerpoint
• Quark Xpress
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe InDesign
• Apple Keynote
• Apple Pages
• Microsoft Publisher

I've even used Excel to make 'slides' where it needed to be a dynamic presentation.

However, to me "death by Powerpoint" doesn't imply someone boring the audience using Powerpoint alone (or at all), but any 'presentation' that is delivered by simply regurgitating page after page of content from the screen...could be charts in Excel, SOPs in Word, diagrams in Visio, or 'animations' in Prezi.

Edited by mmm-five on Tuesday 5th April 09:30

[camel_landy]

mmm-five said:

However, to me "death by Powerpoint" doesn't imply someone boring the audience using Powerpoint alone (or at all), but any 'presentation' that is delivered by simply regurgitating page after page of content from the screen...

^^^ This...

BTW - Good to see QuarkXpress getting a little mention.

M

[shed driver]

Surely not!

SD.

[mmm-five]

Decades of Dilbert were not wrong:













There was a time when the slides were almost entirely made up of Dilbert cartoons...so it was like meme-squared.

Edited by mmm-five on Tuesday 5th April 09:49

[jeremyc]

As has been mentioned, it's really all about the content and presenting style.

It's no use being remembered as the guy with the whizzy animated presentation if no one can remember what you presented. What, rather than how.

I had a colleague who insisted on wearing loud clothing when presenting at conferences "so everyone remembers it". Trouble is he was remembered as the "guy with the colourful, tasteless shirt, stupid hat and bright socks" rather than the one that presented the latest innovative, breakthough product.

[V8mate]

jeremyc said:

As has been mentioned, it's really all about the content and presenting style.

It's no use being remembered as the guy with the whizzy animated presentation if no one can remember what you presented. What, rather than how.

I had a colleague who insisted on wearing loud clothing when presenting at conferences "so everyone remembers it". Trouble is he was remembered as the "guy with the colourful, tasteless shirt, stupid hat and bright socks" rather than the one that presented the latest innovative, breakthough product.

I get that - I thought I'd reflected it in the thread title

[phil4]

PP's ubiquity will be hard thing to overcome. Not just in terms of users, but also viewers.

We're forever emailing power points over, either for a remote meeting, so people can "read along", or afterwards as a summary. Not much fun if that's not something they have the software/account/access to. Whereas PowerPoint is pretty much on every PC.

Then there's the content, at heart a good power point is literally just an assist to a good pitch. If you go too flashy, the pendulum swings the other way... which isn't good. And don't forget all that's being talked about isn't always particularly interesting... quite often it's pretty dry, and doesn't want/need flashy graphics.

Finally, I notice both Prezi and Canva are "per month" pricing. Something I despise for software. At least with PP, you can (and we do) buy it and get on with life.